Names matter

NO

myabstract.docx
Joe’s Filenames Use Spaces and Punctuation.xlsx
figure 1.png
fig 2.png
JW7d^(2sl@deletethisandyourcareerisoverWx2*.txt

YES

2014-06-08_abstract-for-sla.docx
joes-filenames-are-getting-better.xlsx
fig01_scatterplot-talk-length-vs-interest.png
fig02_histogram-talk-attendance.png
1986-01-28_raw-data-from-challenger-o-rings.txt

Three principles for (file) names:

  1. Machine readable
  2. Human readable
  3. Plays well with default ordering

Awesome file names :)

Machine readable

Machine readable

  • Regular expression and globbing friendly
    • Avoid spaces, punctuation, accented characters, case sensitivity
    • Easy to compute on
  • Deliberate use of delimiters

Globbing

Except of complete file listing:

Example of globbing to narrow file listing:

Same using Mac OS Finder search facilities:

Same using regex in R:

Punctuation

Deliberate use of “-” and “_" allows recovery of meta-data from the filenames:

  • “_" underscore used to delimit units of meta-data I want later.
  • “-” hyphen used to delimit words so my eyes don’t bleed.

This happens to be R but also possible in the shell, Python, etc.

Recap: machine readable

  • Easy to search for files later
  • Easy to narrow file lists based on names
  • Easy to extract info from file names, e.g. by splitting
  • New to regular expressions and globbing? Be kind to yourself and avoid
  • Spaces in file names
  • Punctuation
  • Accented characters
  • Different files named foo and Foo

Human readable

Human readable

  • Name contains info on content
  • Connects to concept of a slug from semantic URLs

Example

Which set of file(name)s do you want at 3 a.m. before a deadline?

Embrace the slug

Recap: Human readable

Easy to figure out what the heck something is, based on its name

Plays well with default ordering

Plays well with default ordering

  • Put something numeric first
  • Use the ISO 8601 standard for dates
  • Left pad other numbers with zeros

Examples

Chronological order:

Logical order: Put something numeric first

Dates: Use the ISO 8601 standard for dates: YYYY-MM-DD

From twitter

Left pad other numbers with zeros

If you don’t left pad, you get this:

 10_final-figs-for-publication.R
 1_data-cleaning.R
 2_fit-model.R

which is just sad :(

Recap: Plays well with default ordering

  • Put something numeric first
  • Use the ISO 8601 standard for dates
  • Left pad other numbers with zeros

Recap

Three principles for (file) names

  1. Machine readable
  2. Human readable
  3. Plays well with default ordering

Pros

  • Easy to implement NOW
  • Payoffs accumulate as your skills evolve and projects get more complex.

Go forth and use awesome file names :)